With four straight Final Fours, Big 12 men’s basketball is living up to No. 1 ranking
At one point during Scott Drew’s studio set appearance during NCAA Tournament coverage, the Baylor men’s basketball coach held up his national championship ring from last season and responded, “Big 12!”
The question wasn’t as important as the answer. No coach seems to express more public pride in the conference than Drew, but all of them have had something to crow about in recent years.
When Kansas won the Midwest Regional championship, the Big 12 was assured of a team in the men’s Final Four for the fourth straight tournament. The Jayhawks will face Villanova in Saturday’s national semifinal in New Orleans.
The runs begins with Kansas in 2018 and continued with Texas Tech reaching the 2019 championship game and Baylor taking the title last season. There was no tournament in 2020 because of the pandemic, although Kansas was the nation’s top-ranked team in the last polls and likely would have been the tournament’s overall top seed.
The Big 12’s men’s Final Four streak is the longest among all leagues and in the 26-year history of the conference. From 2002-04, the Big 12 sent five teams to Final Fours.
The current run means the NCAA Tournament performance by the Big 12 is catching up with the data that has rated the league among the top three and often the top men’s conference for nearly a decade.
Starting in 2014, the Big 12 was ranked first in conference Ratings Percentage Index. The RPI used won-loss records and schedule strength and was a formula formerly used by the NCAA selection committee to identify at-large teams. This season marked the seventh time in the last nine years the Big 12 ranked first.
The committee now uses the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool), which calculates strength of a team’s winning percentage and that of the opponent and the opponent’s opponent. The Big 12 was the top conference by that measurement this season.
But results in the postseason needed to back up the computer love, and until recently that wasn’t happening at the Final Four level.
From 2005 until 2015, two Big 12 teams reached the men’s Final Four. In the same span, the Big Ten pushed through 11 teams and the Big East and Southeastern Conference eight each. Kansas’ won the league’s first NCAA men’s title in that stretch, in 2008, but that and the Jayhawks’ runner-up finish in 2012 were the lone Final Four appearances.
Then, the Big 12 was experience a youth movement. Among those coming through the league in those years were some of the game’s greatest players. Kevin Durant, Michael Beasley, Blake Griffin, Marcus Smart, Joel Embiid and Andrew Wiggins. None played more than two years in college. Some are NBA stars today.
But the only one in that group whose team made it out of the tournament’s first weekend was Griffin, when Oklahoma reached a regional final in 2009.
Deeper March Madness runs began to coincide with teams led by more veteran stars, staring in 2016, when senior guard Buddy Hield led Oklahoma to the Final Four.
“For every Durant or Embiid who shoots across the sky like a comet, there came players who weren’t one-and-dones but developed in their programs and became excellent players,” said ESPN analyst Fran Fraschilla, who focuses on the Big 12.
In 2018, senior Devonte Graham led Kansas to the Final Four. In 2019, Texas Tech coach Chris Beard brought in fifth-year transfers in Tariq Owens and Matt Mooney to pair with talented sophomore Jarrett Culver and reached the title game.
Baylor’s 2021 national title team started all seniors and juniors. Coach Scott Drew’s top eight players had all been in college at least three years.
“Now, it’s common for the Big 12 to have more mature, older teams, and transfers have become such a big part of it,” Fraschilla said. “They don’t rely as much on the young stars.”
This Kansas team is another example. The top nine scorers, led by All-America senior guard Ochai Agbaji, have been in college at least three years. Two players, reserves Mitch Lightfoot and Jalen Coleman-Lands, are in their sixth years and rank among the top seven in career college games played.
Also working in the Big 12’s favor is coaching and scheduling. This season, six of the Big 12 coaches led a team to a Final Four. One, Kansas State’s Bruce Weber, was fired. But Mark Adams, who just completed his first season at Texas Tech, and new Wildcats coach Jerome Tang, who had been Baylor’s top assistant, were on the bench in the last two championship games.
“We’ve have and have had Hall of Fame coaches in this league, and we have future Hall of Fame coaches,” Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby said.
The league rings up favorable computer ratings early in the season by playing ambitious nonconference schedules. Success in those games creates such a high bar when league play begins, Big 12 teams often square off with national rankings attached. And playing a complete round robin gives its teams multiple looks at different styles they could face in postseason play.
“The competition is so good in the Big 12, there’s really nothing a team in this league sees in the tournament they haven’t seen in the regular season,” Fraschilla said. “Iron sharpens iron.”
Over the last four tournaments it has been sharp enough for a Big 12 team to advance to the final weekend.
Big 12 in the men’s Final Four
2002: Oklahoma, Kansas
2003: Kansas, Texas
2004: Oklahoma State
2008: Kansas
2012: Kansas
2016: Oklahoma
2018: Kansas
2019: Texas Tech
2021: Baylor
2022: Kansas
This story was originally published March 28, 2022 at 4:27 PM with the headline "With four straight Final Fours, Big 12 men’s basketball is living up to No. 1 ranking."